Exam 5: Identifying Good Measurement

Imagine that you are trying to measure people's stress. Provide three quantitative definitions of stress: one that is ordinal, one that is interval, and one that is ratio.

Dr. Li is interested in creating a measurement of religiosity. According to the dictionary, religiosity is "the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness." He creates a measure comprising 10 statements. People respond to each statement using the following scale (1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Some of the statements are below. Statement 1: "I believe in a religion." Statement 2: "Part of who I am stems from my religious beliefs." Statement 3: "I believe that religion is unnecessary." Given the situation above, explain the difference between criterion validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Why is each one important?

Explain why the textbook argues, "In fact, operationalizations are one place where creativity comes into the research process."

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group of people in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. This procedure is known as a:

Todd is studying the effect of popularity on academic success for his research methods project. He decides to measure popularity by asking each elementary school student to tell him how many friends he or she has. He assumes that more friends means the student is more popular. Which of the following best describes this variable?

What does it mean that "reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity"?

Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumption and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a categorical way to operationalize caffeine consumption?

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. Dr) Sheffield has now decided that he wants to test his measure on some university students (who some estimates say have a 6% prevalence rate of compulsive gambling). He has a group of 100 university students complete his measure. He also has them complete two other measures (one that measures addictive behavior in general and one that measures general attitudes toward gambling). He finds that his new measure is positively associated with each of these other measures. This procedure has provided evidence for the of Dr. Sheffield's measure.

Dr. Li is interested in creating a measurement of religiosity. According to the dictionary, religiosity is "the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness." He creates a measure comprising 10 statements. People respond to each statement using the following scale (1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Some of the statements are below. Statement 1: "I believe in a religion." Statement 2: "Part of who I am stems from my religious beliefs." Statement 3: "I believe that religion is unnecessary." Provide a suggestion for how Dr. Li could establish the criterion validity of his measure.

According to its conceptual definition, a variable should be related to a particular behavior. If a researcher is able to demonstrate that his measure of the variable is related to the behavior, then he has established which of the following?

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr. Sheffield do this?

Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez gives the measure to a group of participants on the first day of the semester and again on the last day of the semester. She then compares the scores between the two time points. This is a test of which of the following?

Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Dr) Rodriquez decides to test the internal reliability of her measure. Which of the following results would make her happy?

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

Dr. Li is interested in creating a measurement of religiosity. According to the dictionary, religiosity is "the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness." He creates a measure comprising 10 statements. People respond to each statement using the following scale (1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Some of the statements are below. Statement 1: "I believe in a religion." Statement 2: "Part of who I am stems from my religious beliefs." Statement 3: "I believe that religion is unnecessary." Dr. Li gives his new measure to a group of 100 adults in order to test the internal validity of his measure. What type of correlation coefficients (r) would Dr. Li expect to find between Statements 1 and 2 and between Statements 1 and 3? What would these correlation coefficients tell Dr. Li about the internal reliability of his measure?

Your friend Dominic is complaining about having to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a test that is required to go to graduate school and is similar to the ACT and SAT. He complains, "Tests like the GRE don't really measure how well people actually do in graduate school." Dominic is questioning the of the test.

Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Dr) Rodriquez is concerned whether her measure will really measure narcissism or if it will measure some other related concept. She is concerned about the scale's .

Which types of reliability can be analyzed with scatterplots?

Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumption and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a quantitative way to operationalize problem-solving ability?

Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Dr) Rodriquez is concerned about the validity of the measure of narcissism recommended by her colleague. She sends a copy of the measure to the faculty members in her psychology department to look at, and they all tell her it looks like it will measure narcissism. She now has evidence of which of the following?